The next time the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens play each other, it will be outdoors at Gillette Stadium. But first, the Original Six rivals needed to square off once more in a traditional hockey venue.
The Bruins visited Montreal’s Bell Centre on Wednesday and, for the first time since Game 5 the 2014 Eastern Conference semifinals, knocked off their rivals, scoring three times in the third period en route to a 3-1 victory.
Claude Julien’s club had lost seven consecutive regular-season games against Michel Therrien’s troops and eight in a row if you include their most recent playoff series, which Montreal won in seven games.
There will be plenty of time for Winter Classic talk over the coming weeks — the game is set for 1 p.m. ET on New Year’s Day — but first, let’s dive into some additional notes from Wednesday.
— Call him Big Pap-Z.
Actually, don’t. Apologies for the terrible pun.
We’re not sorry, however, about showing you this excellent assist by Zdeno Chara, which involved the hulking Bruins defenseman batting a P.K. Subban pass out of midair with his stick blade. The puck deflected right to Loui Eriksson, who raced in on Mike Condon and beat the Canadiens netminder for the Bruins’ first goal of the game.
Landon Ferraro potted a goal of his own just 42 seconds later to give the Bruins a 2-1 lead they would not relinquish.
— Ferraro might need to make his dad a permanent traveling companion. Ex-NHLer Ray Ferraro has been in attendance for three of the eight games his son has played in a Bruins uniform, including Wednesday’s, and in those games, the 24-year-old forward has two goals and two assists.
This game against Montreal might have been Ferraro’s best yet. In addition to the third-period goal, he also dished out five hits, blocked four shots and saw a season-high 14:35 of ice time, including 1:41 on the penalty kill.
— The best player on the ice not named Tuukka Rask — who finished with 32 saves and single-handedly kept the Bruins in the game for the first two periods — was Patrice Bergeron.
The Selke Trophy-winning center was a force in all three zones, and for much of the night, the line of him, Brad Marchand and Brett Connolly was the only one capable of making Condon sweat. Bergeron scored the game’s final goal, tallied a game-high five shots on net, recorded three hits, blocked two shots and ranked third on the team with 20:53 of ice time. (Only Torey Krug and Chara played more.)
That performance earned Bergeron a shoutout from P.J. Stock, the former Bruins brawler who now works as an analyst for “Hockey Night in Canada.”
And since we never turn down an opportunity to share an old P.J. Stock fight video, here’s an old P.J. Stock fight video:
— The Bruins were a perfect 3-for-3 on penalty kills and also came up with a shorthanded goal (Eriksson’s). Over their last 10 games, the B’s have posted a 91.2 percent success rate on the PK, holding opponents scoreless on 35 of 38 power plays.
— Since a season-opening three-game losing streak that included losses to two Atlantic Division opponents (the Canadiens and Tampa Bay Lightning), the Bruins have gone 7-1-0 in divisional games.
Thumbnail photo via Jean-Yves Ahern/USA TODAY Sports Images
